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Paper short abstract

The paper analyzes plague representations across European visual and literary traditions from medieval to modern periods, examining how multisensory experiences shaped collective memory of catastrophic death. It reveals how communities normalized recurring epidemics through narrative.

Paper long abstract

The paper examines how plague narratives across European visual and literary media transformed catastrophic experience into cultural knowledge through multisensory description, with particular emphasis on olfactory dimensions. From medieval chronicles through modern novels, alongside visual representations from Renaissance paintings to baroque altarpieces, communities developed narrative strategies for comprehending recurring epidemics.

The analysis demonstrates consistency in sensory descriptions across centuries, geographical regions, and media. Literary accounts document the pestilential stench of decomposing bodies, the acrid smoke of purification fires, and protective aromatic measures like vinegar-soaked cloths and herbal pomanders. Visual traditions depict figures covering their noses against miasmic air, smoke rising from burning infected materials, and naked bodies awaiting burial—encoding practical survival knowledge while representing plague as a complete sensory catastrophe.

Both visual and textual sources reveal how smell functioned as warning system, disease vector (through miasma theory), and psychological trigger. The overwhelming odors of decay, infected bodies, rodents, and fumigation rituals created an inescapable atmosphere that shaped behavior and belief. Historical accounts and diaries provide firsthand testimony of this olfactory landscape, while artistic representations offer complementary visual narratives.

By examining these representations together, the paper reveals how communities developed shared multisensory language for catastrophe, making the extraordinary "normal" through repeated narrative engagement. This sensory knowledge—transmitted through art, literature, and collective memory—transformed recurring plague from exceptional disaster into lived reality with its own cultural logic and survival protocols embedded in European cultural consciousness.